Book Description

Gain valuable insights into the smaller but more personalized work of liberal arts college science librarianship with these interesting and instructive stories. A striking number of outstanding scientists got their initial encouragement at small liberal arts colleges. Their success is due to both the efforts of their professors and the work of the liberal arts college science librarians who served them assiduously. In Science Librarianship at America's Liberal Arts Colleges, science librarians vividly describe the life and times of small liberal arts college science libraries and the workday life of librarians serving scientists from a main campus library. They describe their efforts to defend expensive science collections in the face of tight budgets, to singlehandedly monitor and select literature in all areas from astronomy through zoology, and to compete with the humanities and social studies for library shelf space. This unique volume is the first to publish prose studies of actual libraries and librarians and provide an intensely personal look at science librarianship at these institutions. The contributing librarians present a range of views on subjects including the historical motivation for their science libraries, physical descriptions of library layouts, statistics on holdings and purchasing trends for science materials, daily tasks and sense of mission concerning library patrons, use of new technology, and future directions for science libraries at small liberal arts colleges. Science Librarianship at America's Liberal Arts Colleges covers a variety of subjects of interest to science librarians at liberal arts colleges, directors of liberal arts college libraries, and library school graduate students. Some of the major topics discussed include: what working liberal arts college science librarians actually do each day how they sustain the enthusiasm of America's few science majors how they satisfy the library collections and services demands of faculty accustomed to and recruited from the large library facilities of such universities as Harvard or Stanford how they use their smaller collections to prepare students for the riches of a Johns Hopkins or Duke when students go on to medical school or graduate school why they choose the tensions and challenges of small liberal arts colleges over the better pay and recognition of larger universities and corporations how campus finances, politics, traditions, and geography play a role in establishing a separate science library how to weed, store, and move voluminous science collections how elite, small liberal arts schools are prioritizing budgets in an age of conversion from print sources to electronic access